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Country noises

I remember the first night I ever spent in this house. It was soon after the Sage and I were engaged and his parents invited us over for the weekend. I was put in the spare bedroom, which in those days housed two single beds, a wardrobe and dressing table – probably a chair or two, there must have been a stool at the dressing table at least. Now, it has a single bed, a large desk, a chest of drawers with a mirror on it, a table and four bookcases, two of them ceiling height. It is the room above the porch and the windows face east and south.

I never did sleep very well in an unfamiliar place, and I hardly slept at all that night. It was the noise. Cows mooed, owls hooted and, at dawn, birds squawked. Incredibly loud for a town girl.

Mind you, although I did live in a town, and always had, the road was a cul de sac and we had a large garden – and I slept on the second floor (that would be the third floor to Americans) so I daresay it was very quiet. In later years, when Weeza came to stay here from London, she always remarked on how quiet it is in this house at night, so it’s all comparative.

I took Ro and Dora out to lunch today and she asked me about how the Sage and I met, so I’ve been thinking back a bit. Not that we met in a romantic way at all, he was a family friend for three years before we started to notice each other in a new light. Just as well, I reckon, I’m not sure that I’d really have become engaged to someone three weeks after the first date if I’d only just met him. I may be impulsive, but only when it really feels right.

Sad to say, none of the eggs we were given have hatched and we don’t think that they will. The Sage is asking around, trying to find someone with bantams who could spare some fertile eggs, chicks or even just a young cockerel, but no luck at present. Too many foxes around, most people who used to keep fairly free-ranging bantams have lost them to the sandy-whiskered gentleman. We will strike lucky sooner or later, however. The Sage is good at that sort of thing.

8 comments on “Country noises”

I think the noisiest house I’ve lived in was the last one – next to a youth centre, Friday and Saturday nights in the summer there was excessive noise until the early hours of the morning. One had the choice of opening windows and being unable to sleep because of noise, or shutting them and melting in the heat.

Ian proposed to me six days after we met at a new year’s eve party, our marriage was five and a half months later.

Both of us just knew it was right, we both make instant, gut decisions and so far our way has worked for us.

A wrong decision for me causes me great worry and stomach ache. When we attend weddings we usually look at each other after and one will say “what chance or how long”.

Our son took 2 months to propose after meeting his wife, then married 11 months after their first meeting. We suspect he thought our way was the norm but I have always believed that an engagement should be as long as it takes to organise the wedding. Ours took longer as we were married by Archbishop’s licence.

When Ian worked in the Middle East (long before we met) he and a colleague could tell which marriages would survive the hot house of the ex-pat world.

Well, Georgie…but it’s true, when it really matters, I go by instinct, and I trust that.

But how lovely, listening to young people harmlessly having fun, Dave. I suppose they weren’t playing football at that time of night, at any rate.

With Al and Dilly, it was love at first sight. There was never any doubt – but I was less than half the Sage’s age when we first met, I was still at school and my father had just died. I wasn’t about to fall in love with anyone.

I spend most Monday nights with relatives who live in Datchet, which is directly under one of the Heathrow flight paths. Trust me, the countryside is quiet. But there are all sorts of noise. It’s like weeds, a sound in the wrong place.

I remember when I came to the house of my grandparents on weekends as a student. The silence and the water, the sound of a gentle stream and the trees. What still makes me freak out are the early birds, what a noisy bunch!

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The Unobservant Eye of Z

Dramatis personae:
My husband, Lovely Tim or LT for short (though he is actually tall).
My late husband, the Sage, aka Russell.
My children: Dearest daughter Weeza, who has London Ways, is married to Phil. Their daughter is Zerlina Buttercup and their son is Augustus Bufo. Elder son - Al X, is married to Dilly. Their children are Squiffany Virgilia, Maximus Pugsley and Hadrian Swallow. Younger son - Ro married Dora in September 2014 and their first baby, Rufus Russell, was born on 9th June last year.
Big Sister: Wink. She lives in Wiltshire, 230 miles away, but we're much closer than that.
We live with our cat Eloise, a black tortoiseshell half-Ragdoll.
Bantams live in the garden, recent additions being tiny Seramas called Crow, Jet and Yvette, along with three chicks, and cats live in the barns but we feed them and they have ambitions to be pets too. In addition, cows come to visit in the summer. Mostly, they stay in the fields. None of them has got a hoof in the door yet.
There is an annexe to the house, where Roses lives and her beloved, Lawrence, spends a lot of time there. Her son, Boy, lives there too.

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Updating takes too much memory, sorry - but then I'm not very young any more, so am hanging on to the memory I've got. Please don't look for any significance in the order - I'm not drunk but I am disorderly.

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